Pat Buchanan: AG Eric Holder Places Race Above All

Attorney General Eric Holder's entrance into the shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, proves he places race above all in his job and on par with Al Sharpton, conservative columnist Pat Buchanan says.

"He's someone who puts the issue of race front and center always, and I don't think that's the mindset you want in an attorney general, especially in a case which obviously has a deep racial component to it," Buchanan said Tuesday on "The Steve Malzberg Show" on Newsmax TV.

"To say, 'I am the attorney general but I am also a black man.' And then … how he was hassled because he was black running through Georgetown to a movie and how he was hassled on the New Jersey turnpike, what he is doing is putting this tragic incident into a racial context between a white cop and a young black man.

"[He is] implying the cop quite naturally was biased or bigoted, and this is what the investigation should likely conclude."

Buchanan — a former senior adviser to Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Ronald Reagan — said for Holder to visit Ferguson "and take sides I find appalling."

"If someone said that in a jury pool, any defense attorney worth his salt would say get that guy out of here, he's already made up his mind about my client," Buchanan said.

"I hope [Holder] came back and reflected upon what it was he was doing. He was acting out there not largely different from Al Sharpton.

"No one thinks Al Sharpton's got the temperament or the mindset on racial issues to be the attorney general of the United States heading up the investigation."

Buchanan believes the subject of racial prejudice in the United States is somewhat misunderstood.

"There’s a narrative about the country that this is a place … where racism is pandemic and it is predominantly overwhelmingly white racism, and it's especially virulent on police forces, and that black males in America are particularly subjected to constant harassment and abuse and beatings and even killings, and every black parent has got to alert his child to the danger," Buchanan said.

"That is the narrative. The question is what is the reality? The reality we know from the statistics is that black kids and black boys and black young men are being shot and killed in far disproportionate numbers by folks in their own neighborhoods and of their own color ...

"The crime rate among African Americans is seven or eight times what it is among white Americans."

Buchanan is also convinced that President Barack Obama will yield his pen to sign an executive order granting amnesty to illegal immigrants.

"There’s no doubt about, Obama's going to have an executive amnesty,'' he said.

"The president is probably now … reflecting on whether to do this before the election, in which case it'll imperil some of the red states senators, but will embolden and energize part of base, or whether to wait until after the election …

"But look, you can bet it's coming. I don't think Obama's going to go to the end of his term without doing a Dreamer type amnesty … so he can tell his constituency here's what I did, I promised you, I did it … It would be part of his historical legacy."

But Buchanan said that such an amnesty will touch off a political fire.

"There's no doubt about it … The vast majority of Americans want the laws of the United States enforced, they want people who come here illegally to be turned around and sent back," he said.

"And they want businesses that make money competing with and defeating their rivals by hiring illegal aliens and cheating … punished. This is still a nation of laws."